Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I come back to a parliamentary question I tabled, the answer to which I presume Mr. McCarthy had an input in. It flows from the national reform programme of the EU, which called for measures to be carried out, notably in 2017, to reach the goal. That was regarding the fact that the Commission is of the view that we are in breach, I presume, of the expenditure benchmark given the retrospective application of a policy position on which the Department is now in discussions with the Commission with a view to trying to resolve this matter. Can Mr. McCarthy confirm to me that discussions on that took place with the Commission before it published the report? The report calls for action to be taken in 2017, and I want Mr. McCarthy to explain to the committee what that means. Does that mean a mini-budget or an adjustment? I ask him to explain to us what is going on as clear as possible and how the Commission has viewed that we are now in a significant breach of the expenditure benchmark that would require us to carry out that type of adjustment this year.